V. Melting Nowhere

Although it was true that her obsession was gone, that did not mean that Hermione had lost interest in Lucius.  On the contrary, she was just as fascinated with him as she had ever been, but he did not float through her mind mockingly anymore, allowing her to concentrate on her training, and Clifton and Dupin. 

Still, Clifton and Dupin did not intrigue her anywhere nearly as much as Lucius did, so she saw them only about two more times each, intending to simply write up a load of rubbish for their section of her report.  It was a mark of just how absorbing she found Lucius, that she would risk the integrity of her report for him.

They fell into a weekly routine, Hermione and Lucius: she visited him on Sunday.  Only and always Sunday.

You see, Saturday and Monday were devoted to her beloved report, which was fast becoming a novel in its own right. 

Harry and Ron noticed this.

"Are you in love?" Ron demanded.  "Is he so utterly charismatic and captivating that you can't live two minutes without him?"

"It's probably a Krum-Lockhart hybrid who can quote Shakespeare while curling his hair on a Firebolt." 

"As impressed as I am by Ron's improved vocabulary, both of you still have a lot of maturing to do."  Hermione poked Harry, who was sniggering uncontrollably. 

"And neither Viktor nor Lockhart could quote Shakespeare."  This with a dignified lift of her chin.

"Yeah, well, maybe your tastes have improved over the years."

The resulting smack and howl of pain from Ron placated Hermione somewhat, and she grinned.

That did not change the fact that Harry and Ron were, as a matter of fact, somewhat close. 

Hermione was actually more like a butterfly caught in a whirlpool.

Against all expectations, Hermione found that confiding in Lucius not only kept the inexplicable obsession at bay, but also comforted her somewhat.  He was always caustic, always heavily prejudiced, and nearly always frustrating, but through the insults and provoking remarks were sometimes incredibly sensitive insights, which reminded Hermione of his enigmatic love for the Black sisters Narcissa and Bellatrix.

She began telling him stories from her childhood that she'd never shared with anyone else, describing things like her resentment at Harry and Ron from their third year in great detail. 

"Did you hate them?"

"No!  I was angry with them – with their stupidity, their –"

"Their pointed preference for each other over you," he said smoothly.

"Yes," she sighed after a beat.  "It's always been that way.  Even now."  A brief pang fluttered in her heart.

"Haven't you always thought that they did not truly appreciate you?"

"I . . ."

"Your swift, precise intellect; your constant, if misguided loyalty; your bright, girlish smiles – do not tell me that they never took these for granted."  His eyes were sharp and beady, hawk-like in their intensity.

She could only smile wistfully.  "It isn't their fault.  They are –," but what they were she did not say; she faltered under his gaze.  She tilted her head in a sweetly melancholy gesture that seemed to say, "I love them all the same."

To this Lucius gave a short, harsh laugh very unlike himself. 

He was rarely consoling, but Hermione felt a strange sort of relief at sharing these bitter feelings with Lucius. 

She even told him about the feelings of inadequacy she'd harbored which had made her such an obnoxious know-it-all at school; they were the feelings that everyone had suspected were there but had never found.  When she gained Moody's disapproval, Lucius was the first to know.

 A report she'd read somewhere proved that releasing one's feelings through some way – a diary or whatnot – was stress-relieving, and as Lucius was never going to get out of Azkaban, there was no chance that a third party would ever know what passed between them.  Lucius was her diary.  Hermione smiled self-deprecatingly at that thought.

On the other hand, Lucius reciprocated by telling her anecdotes from his own childhood, most of which she could tell were calculated to prove to her the superiority of pureblood society, but she found them very interesting all the same.  He told her of his dove-gray stallion that he had named Thanatos; of the morning he'd spent coaxing poison out of his pet Ashwinder to kill his father's favorite hound when he'd refused to buy Lucius a pet dragon.   He'd had his eye on a Swedish Short-Snout after seeing a beautiful specimen of one of his father's associates – and he'd always loved dragons – hence the name of his only son. 

And then, as he said, "I was always a willful child."

"I can imagine."

After a thoughtful silence: "Thanatos.  What does that mean?"

"Thanatos is the name of the Greek god of death."

"What would you have named the dragon?"

"Eris."

That was the goddess of strife and discord; this Hermione knew.  Easily she could picture Lucius astride a dragon glittering silver-blue in the moonlight, the pair of them flying above ruined villages, streams of fire pouring from the dragon's mouth.  It was a medieval tableau of chaos and terror.  Now she looked at him and saw something infinitely more frightening: he did not need the dragon.

***

He told her of the soirees his parents had held at their luxurious mansion; of the nights that silk, velvet, taffeta, and satin confections had waltzed about in their grand ballroom; of the clouds of perfume that floated around the gilt halls; and of the tantalizing mountains of chocolate and spun sugar and treacle that sat complacently on the ebony tables.

"They are Malfoy family tradition; these extravagant balls."  Hermione thought that she detected a note of weariness behind the pride of the statement.

"Did you enjoy them?"

"When I was a child, yes."

"Not anymore?"

"Everything changes."

And she knew that then he wasn't talking only of the Malfoy parties. 

Such talks entranced Hermione for hours on end and further helped her realize just what an intricate character Lucius was.

No matter what else he told her though, he never answered when she asked where he had gotten the knife of their first meeting.  He would simply smile, and those smiles were the only ones where he displayed his teeth.  She noticed that he had teeth that would have made her parents proud, and that his canines were extremely well developed.  So she stopped asking, because his toothy smiles disconcerted her, and Seward told her they hadn't figured it out either.  Hermione reluctantly let it pass as something she would never know the answer to.

Once Hermione missed a meeting.  That Sunday, Harry and Ron had made her an enticing invitation to attend a famous Wizarding play.  Hermione accepted their invitation because she found it moving that they would go to a theatrical production (she knew it really wasn't their thing), she had genuinely wanted to see that play for a long time, and because she felt guilty at being absent from them for so long.

She did enjoy herself that day, as they spent the morning and afternoon browsing in Diagon Alley, talking leisurely and catching up on one another.  Though Hermione had mentioned her study of Lucius to Harry and Ron, it was brought up only once during the course of the day, and none of them dwelt on it, for which Hermione was grateful.  If they suspected something was amiss with that certain topic, Hermione was unaware of it.  The evening was devoted to the play, which Hermione thoroughly delighted in.

When she saw Lucius the next Sunday, he said lightly, "Where were you last week?  I almost missed you."

His tone was dry, but it still stunned Hermione.  To even let those words leave his lips must have taken a great effort on Lucius's behalf.

"Oh, well," she smiled, "that's very sweet of you, Lucius.  But I thought that Les Liaisons des Lenoirs would keep you occupied for quite a while."  She had begun lending him books every week.

"It was far too dull."

"It's very long and complex.  And aren't the Lenoirs related to you?"

"It's long and complex and dull, not to mention poorly written," he said pointedly.  "And the closest relation we have to that family is a fifth cousin by marriage on Narcissa's side."

"Same thing."  Hermione grinned.

Lucius snorted.  "There are more worthwhile things to do than read that rubbish."

And Hermione was touched, and she had thought that to be affected by Lucius like that was impossible.  Consequently, she went home that night and carefully analyzed her feelings for Lucius.

There was no denying that Lucius was intelligent and highly complex, and in light of his love for Narcissa and Bellatrix, which impressed her in spite of herself, Hermione could not bring herself to hate Lucius anymore.  It was harder to loathe someone once they gained layers with acquaintance and were no longer a one-dimensional villain.  He continued to provoke and scorn her, but she took it all in stride.  Though she didn't like it, Hermione accepted now that his pureblood supremacy mentality could not be changed.

If he had been anyone but Lucius, Hermione would have pitied him – she had a very compassionate heart, as anyone who knew about S.P.E.W. could testify.  Lucius was far too lofty for commiseration, however, and Hermione could no more feel sorry for him than abhor him.

Was it conceivable, Hermione wondered, that her initial, disquieting obsession had evolved into something more benevolent, like infatuation?  Since her feelings in general were not negative towards him, and she was reputed, however erroneously, for being a head over heart type over person, she examined this theory particularly closely.  Certainly he was handsome, and cultured, and besides, infatuation was defined as a foolish, unreasoning, or extravagant passion or attraction.  In this case, the words "foolish" and "unreasoning" would be especially applicable.

As unreasoning or foolish as any of Hermione's past crushes had been, though, she believed she could never feel anything of the type for someone who thought she was so exceedingly beneath him.  This was completely different from Lockhart, Viktor, or Ron. 

All in all, Hermione could not articulate her feelings toward Lucius.  Hermione not being able to articulate anything was very rare indeed.

This discomfited her slightly, but she managed to suppress that part of her mind and carry on normally.  Her report was now covering ten scrolls of parchment and growing.

On his birthday, Hermione brought him a box of Honeydukes chocolates.

"And what are these for?" he inquired, eyebrow raised.

"They're for you," Hermione said, trying to sound cheerful.  "Happy birthday."

"You remembered."

"Are you going to take them?"  Hermione pushed the box across the table.  "Or is it some pureblood dogma that you can't accept anything from a Muggle-born?"  Her tone was light, but her eyes challenged him.

Something tautened in his face, but he reached for the box.  "Why did you buy me chocolates?"  He sounded incredulous.

"I hear the food here is terrible – and for the dementors," Hermione said, smiling tentatively at him.  She was speaking the truth; when she stayed too long she began to feel the effects of depression herself.

"Ah.  Well."  Lucius paused and looked at her.  "That's very Gryffindor of you."

He pulled the box closer towards himself and Hermione smiled at the Azkaban stamp of inspection and approval on its lid.  Lucius could never thank her the normal way, and she understood.

***

After nearly six months, Hermione was no closer to understanding him than she had been at the beginning.  She knew a lot more about him, but that was far different from understanding him.  She did not understand him, but she could not tear herself away from him.  It was like coveting the stars.

Something else which nagged (for lack of a better word) at Hermione was that she never saw Lucius outside of his cell, or at night.  She desired a change in setting.  If she interviewed him at night, however, she guessed that it might be more than her nerves could handle.  Somehow the night was Lucius's territory, and she did not want to give him any more advantage during their talks than he already had.  Spartan and so very unfitting for Lucius, Hermione tired of his cell.  Occasionally, she would dream of standing with him on the deck of a ship, with nothing but ocean as gray as his eyes surrounding them; or drinking port with him on a balcony overlooking the Eiffel tower. 

"I want to walk into the palace of winds with you," Hermione once wrote unconsciously in a letter to Neville (whom she kept in touch with mostly through written correspondence – their schedules had the misfortune of rarely coinciding), as she was describing her interviews with Lucius.  When she read over her letter, Hermione furrowed her brow and removed the offending sentence with a stern jab of her wand.  Walk into the palace of winds with him, indeed. 

Her report was much less poetic.  It was filled with many technical and intimidating terms, complicated patterns she had "discovered" in Lucius's behavior, and convoluted discourses on his psyche.  If one had only asked Hermione whether she understood Lucius, however, it is not improbable that she would have collapsed in tears and admitted that her writings of him were vastly nothing.

 
When the end of half a year approached, Hermione came to tell Lucius.

"It's the end of our research stint.  I won't stop visiting you altogether, but my visits will be much less frequent."

"It has been six months already," Lucius reflected.  "Why won't you stop visiting me?"

"Well, you know – I do what I can to relieve your boredom.  There are some interesting books that I haven't gotten around to finding for you, and I know you'll like them . . .."  A weak smile creased her features, trying to justify her illogical answer.

"If you spend any more time in Azkaban studying me, you'll probably rot here," he said mildly, his eyes closed to the extent that she could only see a faint gray glitter under his eyelashes.

There was a long silence.

Then he asked her a question on some trivial topic, which she eagerly seized onto, and they began to talk of random, insignificant things. 

Once they had really run out of things to say and an awkward silence had again settled over the room, Hermione rose and said haltingly, "I suppose I should go, then.  I – I might be able to come and see you tomorrow."

Lucius rose and gave her a diminutive bow, as he had done one time before.  "Goodbye, Hermione," he said politely.

Hermione moved around the table to get to the door, and his impassive eyes followed her.  Inexplicably, Hermione could not bear to say goodbye to him like this, so coldly and formally, so she flew over to him and threw her arms around his neck.

She kissed him.

Slowly, his arms came to rest around her as well, but they held her as gently as though she were woven out of moonbeams and starlight.

She would not have been surprised if he threw her away from him roughly, but he startled her by kissing her back.  Or at least she thought he was kissing her back: it was so gentle that it might only have been that he was allowing his mouth to relax as she kissed him.  Perhaps his passiveness echoed Hermione's kiss back to herself.

It felt like she was falling into a pit, this empty kiss which Hermione pursued with bitterly red lips and wild eyes and convulsing heart.  If she had said she did not want to keep falling, she would have been lying.

When Hermione finally broke away from Lucius, his lips were slightly parted, and he was breathing just a little harder than usual.  His pale face was suffused with the faintest glow, but other than that, he was immaculate.  Hermione could only imagine what she looked like.

She waited for him to speak.  Lucius, who would not even deign to touch her with his hands when he hadn't his gloves, would surely be outraged that she had dared to kiss him – yet why hadn't he pushed her away?

(I want to walk into the palace of winds with you.)

He merely looked at her, his expression completely blank.  His gray eyes bored into her.

Hermione had never been able to win staring contests against him.  She fled.

***

Hermione was a woman of her word.  She broke it once, by never returning to Azkaban.  It disturbed her more than she would have liked to think.

No.  Hermione told herself she did not love Lucius because he certainly had not loved her.

She cried herself to sleep countless nights afterward and only the prisoner of cell 289 with the colorless eyes knew why.

A/N: Letting go of this one is rather sad, but finishing it has also given me a lovely sense of completion and fulfillment.  I really ought to write more multi-chaptered Harry Potter fics (don't worry, I won't inflict all of them on the general public.)

The line "I want to walk into the palace of winds with you," is paraphrased from the film The English Patient.    

As always, constructive criticism and praise are ardently hoped for, and will be read and reread.  A final thank-you goes out to all those who have expressed interest in "The Night Dances."  Your kind words have often left me singing (or wishing I could sing).  Finally, I like to think that I've gotten at least one more person to support the LM/HG pairing.  Again, I'd appreciate input on the ending.  ^_^

Here is Plath's "The Night Dances":

A smile fell in the grass.

Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances

Lose themselves.  In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals-

Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely

Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass

Smells of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.

Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself-

Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets

Have such a space to cross.

Such coldness, forgetfulness.

So your gestures flake off-

Warm and human, then their pink light

Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesias of heaven

Why am I given

These lamps, these planets

Failing like blessings, like flakes

Six-sided, white

On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting

Nowhere.